Sunday, July 13, 2014

"Call Me Bitter" -- Ruth part 1

Last
week’s piece on the Council of Jerusalem wound up taking longer than I
intended, so this week I’m going to cheat and recycle a four-part examination
of the Book of Ruth I wrote some years back for a different online
community. And no, the Story of Ruth is
not exactly an obscure one, but I hope that maybe I can touch on some points
you might not have heard.

The
Book of Ruth is set during the period of the Judges; the time between the
Israelites' entrance into the Promised Land and the establishment of a
monarchy. At this time, the Israelites did not have a central government, but
rather each individual tribe ruled itself. The closest thing they had to a king
were the judges, who for the most part were arbitrators and sometimes spokesmen
for God who occasionally led the people in time of war.

Jewish
tradition claimed that the prophet Samuel was the author of the Book of Ruth,
but this seems unlikely, since the book refers to David, who did not become
king until after Samuel's death. Some scholars believe the book was written
during the monarchy, perhaps during the rule of David's son Solomon. Other
scholars point to some words in the text that suggests influence from the
Aramaic language, which would have come much later; say, in the time following
the Babylonian Captivity. Some
commentators have suggested that the book was written as a rebuttal to the Book
of Ezra, which condemns the practice of intermarrying with foreigners, by
telling the story of a Moabite girl.

In
the Tanakh, the Hebrew Scriptures, Ruth is placed near the end. The Tanakh is divided into three categories: The Torah, or Law of Moses; the Prophets, containing
both the books of the prophets and the more important books recording the
history of the Kingdom of Israel; and the Writings, which is sort of everything else, containing
poetry, wisdom literature and a few shorter narratives. The Book of Ruth,
having neither Moses nor any prophets, gets stuck in the back with Esther, Job
and Nehemiah.

In
the Christian Era, Jerome reorganized the books of Jewish Scriptures,
subdividing the categories and placing the books in rough chronological order
by setting, if not necessarily by composition.
In Ruth’s case, at least, I like this arrangement better, because the
Book of Ruth provides a welcome respite between the dark and grim Book of
Judges and the bloody, battle-filled books of Samuel.

There
are no flashy miracles in the Story of Ruth and no exhortations of Divine
Wisdom. It's just a sweet romantic story about a young widow who is a stranger
in a foreign land and who finds happiness in a kind and loving benefactor.
Perhaps that is miracle enough.

A
man named Elimelech travels to Moab with his wife Naomi and his two sons to
escape a terrible famine. Elimelech means "(My) God is king" and
Naomi means "pleasant." They came from Ephrathah, an old name for the
town of Bethlehem. You might remember from Christmas programs the prophecy of
Micah:

But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah,
though you are small among the clans of Judah, Out of you will come for me one
who will be ruler over Israel... (Micah 5:2 NIV)

Moab was a neighboring country on the east
shore of the Dead Sea, about a fifty mile journey from Bethlehem. Moab and
Israel had bad blood between them ever since the time of Moses. (Numbers
22:1-4; 25: 1-3) In fact, in Deuteronomy it states:

No Ammonite or
Moabite or any of his descendants may enter the assembly of the LORD, even down
to the tenth generation. -- (Deuteronomy 23: 3 NIV)

Despite
this enmity, Elimelech and his family found a home in Moab and his sons married
Moabite girls; one named Orpah and the other Ruth. (And yes, Orpah is whom
Oprah Winfrey was named after; the spelling just got messed up). Then tragedy
struck. First Elimelich and then his sons died, leaving Naomi and her
daughters-in-law alone. This was a major
catastrophe. In the culture of the time, women had little to no rights of their
own. The Man of the Family, either the woman's father or her husband or her son
if her husband was dead, was head of the household; he was responsible for
taking care of the women-folk. A widow with no sons was a pitiable creature
forced to rely on the charity of friends and neighbors.

Was the death of Naomi's husband and her sons divine punishment for letting the boys marry wicked Moabites? Ezra probably would have said yes; but the author of Ruth makes no such suggestion. On the contrary, Ruth is praised by the text as a virtuous woman, and the ancestress of... ah, but we'll get to that.

Even
though Naomi had lived in Moab for ten years, she undoubtedly felt she would do
better in her homeland. She heard that the famine in Judah had ended, so she
decided to return to Bethlehem. Her
daughters-in-law wanted to come with her, but Naomi tried to dissuade them.
They were both young enough that they could possibly find another husband;
Naomi was not. What's more Naomi could not provide a new husband for either of
them.

This
is an important point, touching on what's called the levirate law. When a man
died without a son, his brother was legally obligated to take the widow and
provide her with an heir to take care of her. This happened in the weird and
sordid story of Tamar and Judah (Genesis ch. 38) which we’ll get to another
time. It is also the basis of the
hypothetical question the Sadducees pose to Jesus regarding marriage at the Resurrection
(Matthew 22: 23-33) The levirate law becomes important later in this
story.

Naomi
tells her daughters-in-law to go home. They'd be better off among their own
people than sharing in her bitterness and misery. Orpah decides that she's
right and bids Naomi a tearful farewell. Ruth, however insists upon staying
with Naomi.

"Don't urge me to leave
you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you star I will
stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will
die and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so
severely, if anything but death separates you and me." (Ruth 1:16-17)

This
passage is sometimes used as a wedding text, especially in churches which
perform same-sex marriages. I’m not sure
how I feel about this; does every expression of affection between two people
have to be about sex? But it is a
beautiful passage. And it also provides
a rare example of a Bible story that passes the Bechdel Test.

The
test was devised by a character in cartoonist Allison Bechdel’s comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For, and has gotten
some popularity as a tool to look at gender relationships in popular culture. A movie which passes The Test is one which
(1) has at least two women in it – preferably named characters – (2) the women
talk to each other, and (3) they talk about something other than men.

The
books of the Bible were written largely by men in a male-dominated culture, and
it probably didn’t occur to them to write much about what the women were doing. In a couple of places, though, we get these
moving, personal looks at the women of the Bible. Not many; the only other story passing the
Bechdel Test that comes readily to mind is the scene between Mary and her cousin
Elizabeth in Luke chapter 1; but the ones we see are special.

The
formula “May the LORD deal with me ever
so severely…” is one which occurs frequently in the Books of Samuel, which
suggests to me that they might have had the same author. (Which I think would
mean it was written earlier; or that the author of Ruth was simply imitating
the style of Samuel)

Interesting
to note that the word Ruth uses here, rendered in most English translations as
"the LORD" and in the KJV as "Jehovah" is YHWH, or "Yahweh", the special
Hebrew name for God. This is the only place in the book where Ruth says this
word and the fact that she swears by the Name of the Jewish God is a sign that
she's serious about adopting her mother-in-law's religion.

Naomi
returns home and her old friends and neighbors are excited to see her. But Naomi takes no joy from her return . “Call me Mara.” (bitter), she says.

"I went away full, but the LORD has brought
me back empty. ...The LORD has afflicted me; the Almighty has brought
misfortune upon me." (Ruth 1:21 NIV)

The
word translated "afflicted" here can also be translated "has
testified against", as it is in the King James Version. The New English
Bible renders this passage: "The
Lord has pronounced against me; the Almighty has brought disaster upon me." The Anchor Bible, likewise renders it: "For Yahweh has testified against me / And
Shadday has pronounced evil sentence on me." ("Yahweh" of
course is the Holy Name of God as declared to Moses. "Shaddai" is an
archaic term for God, apparently used in patriarchal times and the time of the
Judges; it's usually translated as "the Almighty").

In
the Anchor Bible's notes, the translator comments: “She portrays herself as a defendant in a
legal action in which the charges and testimony are in effect unknown to her,
in which she has been deemed guilty, in which punishment has already been meted
out. Worst of all, her antagonist is God.”
In this Naomi has a lot in common with Job, framing her complaint
against God in legal terms. The prophet Jeremiah does the same: You are always righteous, O LORD, when I
bring a case before you. Yet I would speak with you about your justice: Why
does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do all the faithless live at ease?
(Jeremiah 12:1 NIV)

But
for all her self-pity and complaint, Naomi already possessed a great blessing
in her daughter-in-law, Ruth, who is kind and devoted, and as we will see in
the next chapter, bold and resourceful as well.